Ian Hideo

＂The first and greatest anthology of classical Japanese poetry, the Man’yoshu is considered, along with Tale of Genji, to be one of the two most important works in classical Japanese literature＂--

Ian Hideo Levyis a Japanese-language author who is one of the first Americans to write modern literature in Japanese. He was born in Berkeley, California to a Polish mother and Jewish father and moved between Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States during his childhood. At Princeton, he studied the Man’yōshū and graduated with a degree in East Asian Studies. After teaching at both Princeton and Stanford, Levy moved to Tokyo and became the first foreigner to win the Noma Literary Award for New Writer. He was awarded the 2007 Japan Foundation Special Prize for introducing Japanese literature to a foreign audience and won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 2017.